Breaking Ground

    

    I figured that if I’m going to ask people to share their stories and lives with me I should be the one to share the first one.  I also thought maybe it would give me a better opportunity to explain what exactly I'm trying to do with this website. 

     When I was a senior in high school I had to take a government class. Part of that class was completing five hours of community service. A friend of mine volunteered at a suicide prevention help line and mentioned to me that they also had a section of the building where they had a clothes drop off. All id have to do was organize the bins of clothes and hang out for the duration of his shift. It sounded pretty easy, so I agreed to do it.  The room was a total wreck, but I set to folding and putting everything in order. It was enjoyable and pretty relaxing. People came in and out, the town had a lot more homeless people in it than I realized so there was always someone looking to talk for a few minutes.  I like that, learning about people, it honestly makes me really happy. A woman came in at one point who was nicknamed “Hurricane” because of her tendency to rip through all of the bins and never put things back. She lived up to her name. The night rolled on and after a while the visitors dwindled. Towards the end a man came in and said hello to me. He was a regular visitor to the building and he struck up a conversation with me. It started off simple enough, telling me about how he was waiting for the Sunday papers to be delivered to the corner store so that he could go make a few dollars putting the inserts into the papers and stacking them for customers to buy. I smiled and talked with him about what I was doing there and how my night had gone. He then started telling me about how his father had passed away a few years ago and how much he loved him and how he had looked up to him. I sat quietly and listened as he told me all these stories about his dad. How he was afraid he’d let him down or that he wasn’t proud of him.  He cried, a grown man that I had never met prior to that night sat with me, told me a story and cried. I told him all about my family and my life and he listened with just as much interest as I had given him. When the time came to go, I stood up and thanked him for hanging out with me and talking to me. He smiled and shook my hand and then said something that to this day I've never forgotten. “You’ve got an amazing heart and a very good soul.  Don’t lose that smile, kid. It looks really good on you.” I thanked him, went home and went about the rest of my school year. But I was never the same after hearing a total stranger tell me those things. He changed my life.

     So, there you go. The first of many stories, I hope. I want to make someone else feel the exact same way that I felt that night. Changed, noticed, and cared about. I decided that I'm going to keep every post on this site anonymous. The name of the person isn’t important. The experience is.  Everything that goes up here is for the purpose of helping people. Helping them heal, helping them smile again. I’ve given up on a lot of dreams in my life. I’ve never taken a risk or done anything daring. You cant save the world if you never leave your front door.

     I want to give all of you a platform to do exactly that. Save the world, help someone you may not even know. If I help just one person, this will all be worth it. If I can give a kid something that I never had when I was growing up, hope, I've saved the world. If I can help someone talk about something that’s been weighing them down and help them move on, I’ve saved the world. If by sharing your story, you reach someone who needed just a little bit of help, YOU have saved the world. The stage is yours…..

-A